How did we get here? David Daley on Republican gerrymandering

How did we get here? How do we move forward? David Daley talks to DAUK about Republican gerrymandering

In his 2016 American best-seller Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy, our speaker, David Daley, offers an explosive account of how Republican legislators and political operatives managed to rig our democracy through redistricting.

His book details how, after President Obama’s election in 2008, a small cadre of Republican operatives focused on gaining control of state governments. Through control of state legislatures and governorships, they could control the drawing of state and congressional districts. With "dark money" unleashed by the Citizens United decision and technologically advanced calculations, Republicans proceeded to create a gerrymandered electoral map that favored them.

And it soon started working: in 2012, Democratic candidates won over a million more votes than Republican ones, but Republicans picked up 33 more House seats. Daley examines the far-reaching effects of this so-called REDMAP program, which has radically altered America’s electoral map and created a Republican firewall in the House of Representatives.

This program, as Daley writes, was "the most strategic, large-scale and well-funded campaign ever to redraw the political map coast to coast, with the express goal of locking in Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislative chambers for the next decade or more."

Gerrymandering has been the key first step in creating the many-headed hydra of voter suppression. States decide how they are going to run their elections, limited only by judicial oversight. Since 2010, Republican-controlled states have unleashed a flood of measures to suppress likely Democratic voters, stepping up these efforts after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 — rigid voter ID laws, the elimination of early voting and reduction of polling places, felon disenfranchisement, refusing to invest in voting infrastructure in Democratic strongholds, and so on. These measures may well have played a decisive role in Trump’s surprise Electoral College victory.

But these efforts have not gone unchallenged. Legal challenges to gerrymandering have been successful, for example, in North Carolina and several important cases are pending.

In October, the U.S.Supreme Court will hear the oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford, an appeal of a landmark decision striking down a Wisconsin state assembly map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. Cases on gerrymandered redistricting are also pending in various courts about North Carolina (again!), Texas, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Virginia and Georgia.

While legislative efforts to reform redistricting mainly operate at the state level, reform legislation has also been filed in the House of Representatives. Keep up to date on these cases and legislation!

As we prepare for upcoming 2017 elections and the critical 2018 midterms, the DAUK Voting Rights Group of the Policy Network in collaboration with the Voter Registration Committee offers this timely opportunity to hear David Daley’s analysis, his updates and to discuss with fellow Democrats how we can fight back and make elections fair again.

Schedule: Thursday September 21 2017

6:30 pm: Check-in opens

7:00 - 8:30 pm: David Daley presentation, Q & A

9:00 pm: Event ends

9:30 pm Building closes

For reviews of the book, interviews with David Daley and more information on gerrymandering, voter suppression and other voting rights issues, go to www.daukpan.org.uk/VotingRightsEventsDaley

To find out more about the Policy Network groups, including Voting Rights, email policynetwork@democratsabroad.org.uk. To join the Voter Registration team, email gotv@democratsabroad.org.uk.

About David Daley:

David Daley is the author of the American best-seller Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind The. Secret Plan To Steal America’s Democracy, and one of the nation's leading authorities on gerrymandering and redistricting. He is the former editor in chief of Salon, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Boston Globe, New York magazine and is forthcoming in The New Yorker. He is a digital media fellow at the University of Georgia's Grady School of Journalism, and has appeared as a guest on NPR's Fresh Air and on CNN. He lives in western Massachusetts.

Booking:

In compliance with U.S. campaign and party funding laws, we can only accept payments from U.S, citizens and green card holders. Non U.S. citizens are very welcome to attend, but only as guests of U.S. citizens, who must book and pay for - as a gift - their guests' admission. By booking and paying for tickets for this event, you are confirming that you are a U.S. citizen or green card holder.